


What's in a Name

by Belphegor



Series: Carnahan-O'Connells musings and snapshots [3]
Category: The Mummy Series
Genre: Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21805351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belphegor/pseuds/Belphegor
Summary: They all have different ways of either addressing each other or talking about each other. Sometimes they’re the same, sometimes they’re not, but they are theirs.
Series: Carnahan-O'Connells musings and snapshots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557865
Comments: 18
Kudos: 51





	What's in a Name

Evy has only ever called Rick “Richard” _once_ , early in their marriage while they were squabbling over something; they both stopped, looked at each other, and burst out laughing. She’ll introduce him as “my husband, Rick”. In the early days, even after their wedding, she sometimes reverted to “Mister O’Connell” – with emphasis on the “Mister” – to emphasise a point, or make him laugh.

Rick calls her both “Evelyn” and “Evy”, and how he refers to her in front of other people will depend on the degree of familiarity with them. To be honest, he gets a kick out of introducing his wife as “Doctor Evelyn O’Connell” once she gets her doctorate, if only to see the shock on some people’s faces once they realise “Dr O’Connell” is a woman.

Endearments like “darling”, “dear”, “sweetheart”, and “honey” roll naturally off their tongues. He’ll call her “hon”, and the domesticity of it makes her smile; she’ll call him “darling”, and he finds the way her voice draws out the ‘ah’ adorable.

Jonathan has never called his sister “Evelyn” in his life – she’s always been “Evy”, “sis”, or the ubiquitous “old mum” (which made their mother laugh and used to drive a teenage Evy crazy). Even when introducing her to strangers he’ll say “my sister, Evy”. Evy, for her part, never found a satisfying term of address in retaliation. She usually calls her brother “Jonathan”, “idiot”, “you prat” and variations on the theme; it takes a particularly dramatic situation or strong emotional upheaval to get her to call him “Jon”, but it happens.

Nobody but Ardeth calls Alex by his full name, unless he’s in trouble. His mum often calls him “sweetheart”, which suits him fine, but only if they’re alone, because when he’s a teenager he tries to be A Lad and gets some bravado. His dad usually calls him “Alex”, sometimes “son”, but most of the time he’s just “you”, which is fine by him and suits all kinds of situations, when he does something stupid (“you – _big_ trouble”) or good (“you did a good job”) or is just there (“hey, you”). To Jonathan, he’s either “Alex” or “partner”; when he’s small it makes him feel kinda grownup, and later it becomes quaint and old-fashioned but sort of sweet, like when Uncle Jon calls Dad “old boy”.

Alex stopped calling his parents “Mummy” and “Daddy” when he was around six or seven and switched to “Mum” and “Dad”. When he’s a little older, approaching adulthood, he calls his uncle “Jonathan” once, and then reverts to “Uncle Jon” immediately, because Jonathan never said anything but the look on his face broke Alex’s heart just a little. He’ll introduce him to people as “my uncle Jonathan” (no comma) and just use his name in conversation, but addresses him as “Uncle Jon” until the day he dies.

There are exactly two people on the planet who call Rick by his first name, and that’s Evy and Jonathan. Practically everybody else calls him “O’Connell”, with or without a “Mr” attached. At some point he tells Ardeth to call him “Rick”, as well, because they’ve known each other for ages and he doesn’t call him “Bay”, does he? And the two people become three.


End file.
